By Zoë Dales
Edited by Siru Chen and Symran Annika Saggar
It was the story of the Fox sisters that kickstarted the global emergence of spiritualism in the
nineteenth century. Following their experiences in 1848 in Hydesville, New York, whereby
they were in communication with ‘an invisible noisemaker’ through a series of raps and
knocks, [1] the young girls made evident the possibility to transcend the boundaries between the spiritual and material worlds. [2] What aided the dissemination of spiritualism were the momentous technological advancements of the period, predominantly the telegraph, whereby messages could be compressed into binary codes and sent long distances in reduced amount of times. [3] Though the definition of ‘spiritualism’ is nuanced, for the purpose of this essay, the term will be defined as communication with the deceased. What caught the attention of Britain’s Victorian elites was the threat of spiritualism to social norms and societal power structures. Despite Alex Owen’s significant contributions to the study, the works of Marlene Tromp and Judith Walkowitz are more convincing as they recognise that the powers that women had acquired through spiritualism extended beyond the walls of the séance room. Nineteenth- century spiritualism ‘broke all the rules of decency and decorum’ [4], and challenged the conduct literature of the period that submitted to the doctrine of ‘separate spheres’ [5] and set behavioural expectations. [6]
The following essay will explore the elitist response to the rise of spiritualism in Victorian
Britain, placing particular focus on the ways in which male elites attempted to reclaim their
social authority by undermining spiritualists. Firstly, this will be done through assessing the
Society for Psychical Research (SPR) and the institution’s frameworks of oppression created
through the invention of the ‘subliminal self’. Secondly, this will be done through exploring
the male elitist invention of the concept of telepathy. Both of these creations were produced to address the rising threat of spiritualism and delegitimise the power of spiritualists. This was primarily done through moving away from the spiritual and towards the material and scientific realms in justifying unusual phenomena.
The SPR was founded in 1882 as an institution to make an ‘organised and systematic attempt to investigate various sorts of debatable phenomena’, [7] and to police spiritualism and assess the legitimacy of supernatural accounts. [8] Spiritualism played a significant role in allowing women of all classes to undermine social structures and partake in areas of society that were formerly restricted to them. It was through spiritualism that women ‘could speak publicly and with authority on politics, social controversies and religious dogma’. As Tromp states, ‘the darkened parlor of the séance invited and embodied the disruption of the ordinary’ and it was in this space that the ‘customary barriers of age and gender’ were defied. [9] The SPR’s creation of the subliminal self was a male elitist attempt to reinstate social identities and suppress the increased participation of working-class women in spiritualism. [10] As stated by Rhodri Hayward, psychical research was used as a tool in which the SPR could both diagnose and eradicate the threats posed by spiritualists [11] by collapsing spirits into the ‘subliminal self’. [12] Frederic W.H. Myers’ theory of the subliminal self is defined as thoughts or feelings lying beneath the threshold of consciousness. Myers’ posthumous book Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death dedicated a chapter to advance the idea that the subliminal mind was responsible for spiritualist encounters, and that such encounters were in fact hallucinations that emerged due to cryptomnesia, which were memories of the past submerged or subliminal those forgotten by the supraliminal self. [13] This idea discredited spiritualists as it primarily introduced the idea of separated consciousnesses; it justified spiritualist encounters with narratives of an individual’s life history, and a return to the past, rather than through communication with the deceased. Thus, the subliminal mind suggested that those partaking in spiritualism were deluded visionaries who were incapable of determining their own experiences. [14] An example of this is evident in the journal from the Society for Psychical Research published in 1884-85,
in an account titled ‘Report of the Shropshire Disturbances’ of November 1833. In this report, the domestic workers of a secluded farm named ‘The Woods’, amongst them a nurse-girl named Emma Davies, were preparing tea and cooking food. They declared that numerous objects ‘jumped’, which inaugurated a chain of supernatural events. Despite several witnesses, Mr F. S. Hughes of the SPR declared that such events occurred as a result of both trickery and the supernatural. The Council, on the contrary, suggested that Davies had studied trickery from a waggoner, who had seen them done at a fair, and had ‘produce[d] all of the mysterious phenomena’. What is interesting here is that the above is a description of a predominantly working-class supernatural experience. The language in Hughes’ report seems somewhat dismissive of the described events, despite the various witnesses. Those whose accounts he momentarily considered were that of women, nevertheless, they were effortlessly dismissed by the council, who stated that “all these assertions appear to be incorrect”. This suggests that the SPR were dismissing the experience on the grounds that the majority of witnesses were of the working-class, and also women. This leads one to bring into question how the SPR addressed working-class accounts, and whether they dismissed all working-class and female claims to supernatural events. The disturbances in Shropshire serve as only one instance whereby the SPR evidently undermined women through deeming the events fraudulent, and rapidly dismissing the witness statements of Mrs Hampson and Priscilla Evans. This report undoubtedly reflects the male elitist response to the rise of spiritualism as it reveals the rapid attempts to undermine females of working-class social standings, through deeming their accounts as uncompelling and consequently accusing Emma Davies. [15]
Another way in which male elites attempted to undermine spiritualists and reassert male elite power and control in society was through the creation of the concept of telepathy. Telepathy was ‘the ability of one mind to impress or to be impressed by another mind otherwise than through the recognised channels of sense.’ [16] This was done to justify spiritualist phenomena that could not solely be explained through the notion of the subliminal self. [17] Richard Noakes recognises that telepathy emerged as a result of the threat spiritualistic manifestations posed to the ‘intellectual integrity’ of the SPR, hence prompting the institution’s research into the psychological subjects of hallucinations, hypnotism, and the automatic writing of trance mediums. [18] The SPR devised a series of telepathic experiments between 1881 and 1883, and ultimately established that electrical currents could ‘radiate its energy into the surrounding space’. [19] Thus, telepathy became spiritualism’s scientific accessory. The institution believed that everyone had the ability to access unconscious thoughts of others, and were, therefore, able to relay information unknown to their conscious selves. Nonetheless, they argued that humans had evolved and lost this trait in order to make themselves suitable for existence in a modern society, thus, suggesting the idea that spiritualists were primitive and underdeveloped. [20] An example of such male elitist research is evident in the 1880s Creery telepathy experiments up to 1886. In these experiments, the Creery daughters, aged ten to seventeen ‘free as possible from morbid or hysterical symptoms’, and the family’s servant-girl, ‘were frequently able to designate correctly, without contract or sign, a card or other object fixed on in the child’s absence’. In 1881, a session of experiments focused on random objects in the household, fixed upon by the researchers, that were placed around the house. The selected Creery child returned in all cases to the living room with the correct objects. [21] In his experiments, Barrett ensured that the child was blindfolded or insisted silence so they were unable to pick up any verbal, nonverbal, or visual cues from those around them. [22] Of the fifteen experiments executed in naming objects or English towns in the child’s absence, there were only three failures. [23] The early successes of the experiments, in spite of exterior contestation, served as an example that advanced the claims of telepathy and thus challenged the possibility of supernatural communication. In the experiments from 1880 to 1882, the description of the
experiments detailed in the Phantasms of the Living (1886) repeatedly reasserted that the
chances of collusion in these experiments were low. The research provided numerous examples of experiments and scientific statistics to support and advance their claim of telepathic communication. [24] What is further important to consider in the case of the Creery family is the recognition that the girls were strategically selected for their gender, and were considered well-balanced and healthy in their condition, evidently revealing their attempt to distinguish the aforementioned girls from their spiritualist counterparts. These experiments undoubtedly reveal the male elitist attempt to reclaim their position of social authority and legitimacy through the creation of telepathy and the recorded supporting scientific data. Their experiments show that the girls’ abilities lied in telepathic communication rather than communication with the deceased, which worked to undermine spiritualism and delegitimise spiritualist claims.
In conclusion, it is clear that there was a repeated attempt by male elites to challenge the escalating power spiritualists had acquired in nineteenth-century Victorian Britain. Notable male elites, including Myers and Gurney, repeatedly attempted to reassert pre-existing gender-class power structures in Victorian society through the formation of the Society for Psychical Research and its subsequent creation of the subliminal self and the concept of telepathy. The creation of the subliminal mind evidently discredited spiritualists as it explained that their supernatural experiences were not communication with the dead, but instead an emergence of forgotten memories by the supraliminal self. We can see the SPR’s attempt to undermine the female working class in particular through the ‘Report on the “Shropshire Disturbances”’ from 1883, in which the Council of SPR rapidly dismissed the servants of the property’s claim to a supernatural experience, and instead blamed it on Emma Davies and her supposed trickery. This incident strengthened the male elitist agenda as it suggested that the accounts of working-class women were not credible and that they were delusional. Another way in which male elites attempted to undermine spiritualists and reassert their social authority was through the creation of telepathy. It was through telepathy that male elites were able to disconnect inexplicable phenomena from the spiritual realm, and instead create a link to the material world, science, and their claim to telepathic communication. The experiments surrounding the Creery family pushed forward this agenda with the publication of Phantasms of the Living (1886), whereby the evidence in favour of telepathy was exhibited, and the authors’ skilfully utilised ‘sane’ female subjects for their experimentation. Henceforth, from the elitist creation of the subliminal mind and telepathy, it is clear that male elites of Victorian Britain responded to the rise of spiritualism with an attempt to undermine spiritualists, particularly the working-class female, reinstate pre existing gender structures, and reassert elitist authority in society.
Notes
[1] Barbara Weisberg, Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2004), pp. 1-5.
[2] Marlene Tromp, ‘Spirited Sexuality: Sex, Marriage and Victorian Spiritualism, Victorian Literature and Culture, 31/1 (2003), p. 67.
[3] Jeremy Stolow, ‘Salvation by Electricity’, in Hent de Vries (ed), Religion: Beyond a Concept (New York, Fordham University Press, 2008), p. 671.
[4] Tromp, ‘Spirited Sexuality’, p. 67.
[5] ‘Separate Spheres’ can be described as the notion that women and men should be divided between the public and private spheres on the grounds of gender and ‘natural’ characteristics. See Kathryn Hughes, ‘Gender roles in the 19th Century’, The British Library (2014).
[6] Caroline Austin-Bolt, ‘Sarah Ellis’s The Women of England: Domestic Happiness and Gender Performance’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 37/3 (2015), p. 183.
[7] Noralie Robertson, Mrs. Piper & The Society for Psychical Research (San Francisco: Red Wheel Weiser LLC., 2011), p. i.
[8] Rhodri Hayward, ‘Policing Dreams: History and the Moral Uses of the Unconscious’, History Workshop Journal, 49 (2000), p. 149.
[9] Tromp, ‘Spirited Sexuality’, pp. 67-70.
[10] Emily Bartlett, ‘The Rise of Psychical Research’, Lecture, Queen Mary University of London (26 Nov. 2020).
[11] Hayward, ‘Policing Dreams’, p. 153.
[12] Richard Noakes, ‘The “Bridge which is between Physical and Psychical Research: William F. Barrett, Sensitive Flames, and Spiritualism’, History of Science, 42/4 (2004), p. 452.
[13] Frederic W.H. Myers, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (Good Press, 2019), p.7.
[14] Hayward, ‘Policing Dreams’, p. 153. 15 ‘Report on the “Shropshire Disturbances” in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol.I (1884-5 <https://archive.org/details/journalofsociety01soci/page/n5/mode/2up>.
[16] Edmund Gurney, Frederic W.H. Myers, Frank Podmore. Phantasms of the Living (London: Rooms of the Society for Psychical Research, 1886), p. xiii.
[17] Bartlett, ‘The Rise of Psychical Research’, Lecture, Queen Mary University of London, (26 Nov. 2020).
[18] Noakes, ‘The Bridge Which is Between Physical and Psychical Research’, p. 452.
[19] Roger Luckhurst, The Invention of Telepathy 1870-1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 88 in Bruce J. Hunt, The Maxwellians (New York: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 40.
[20] Bartlett, ‘The Rise of Psychical Research’, Lecture, Queen Mary University of London, (26 Nov. 2020).
[21] William F. Barrett, Edmund Gurney and Frederic W.H. Myers, ‘First Report on Thought-Reading’, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 1 (London: Trübner and Co.,Ludgate Hill, 1883), pp. 19-23.
[22] Noakes, ‘The Bridge Which is Between Physical and Psychical Research’, p. 41.
[23] Noakes, ‘The Bridge”, p. 56.
[24] Gurney, Phantasms of the Living, pp. 21-27.
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